The Pan American HS 'verse Related Scenes
by leahalexis
Summary: Non-Katniss POV ficlets from The Pan-American High School Scholarship Pageant Competition.
1. Chapter 5: Haymitch

**NOTES**

Sometimes, in writing a chapter, it helps to take a break and explore what's going on in the heads of characters who are not narrating the story. So I figured I might as well share . . . at least where it isn't going to spoil future plot points!

Some of these may very well work as standalones. But they're definitely intended as counterparts to _The Pan-American High School Scholarship Pageant Competition_.

First up: A little Haymitch backstory. Goes with _The Pan-American High School Scholarship Pageant Competition_ chapter 5.

* * *

Haymitch Abernathy hates Effie Trinket. More than hates. Loathes.

_There's a fine line between love and hate_, people are fond of telling Haymitch, condescending, knowing smirks on their faces. But Haymitch knows they're wrong.

As far as Haymitch is concerned, there are three very different types of loathing. There is the kind of loathing that rides the razor edge of passion, a feeling so fierce, so obsessive, it might as well be love. There is clear-cut, rational loathing, which has a clear cause and also clear intention (even if that intention is only to stoke the drive for revenge). And then there is the bitter loathing reserved for things that remind one of one's own failings, one's own impotence.

The first kind of loathing is how he feels about alcohol.

The second is what he feels for pageant director Snow and the rest of the Northwest Mining Company Insurance's board of directors: the men responsible for rescinding his health care after he was forced to go on disability, for forcing his wife into the struggling community care facility—with its too few doctors and too old equipment, all they could afford even going so far into debt he would never get out—that killed her.

The third loathing—this is the type he feels toward Effie. Effie, who is endlessly, blindly optimistic. Who believes this competition she pours her heart and soul into every year isn't fixed from the start—who believes that _life_ isn't fixed from the start.

It's a pointless loathing, what he feels for Effie, a constant low-level hum of pity and disgust that makes him irritable and raw. It's exhausting.

But she keeps paying him. So he keeps coming back for more.


	2. Chapter 10: Peeta

_NOTES_: Peeta, on Katniss. (Sorry, guys, not literally.) Goes with The Pan-American High School Scholarship Pageant Competition chapter 10.

* * *

Peeta can't explain what it is, exactly, about Katniss Everdeen—not completely. He just knows that she's the place his eyes always go, whenever she's in the room.

She's thin and she's pretty, under her short, choppy hair and loose clothes. But he's fairly sure it's not either of those things. Maybe it's the way the hollows of her cheeks and neck make her look fierce and vulnerable at the same time. Maybe it's the way she almost never smiles. Maybe it's just that she's _different_.

The first time he noticed her, it was because Bobby Cray pointed her out. He can't stand Bobby Cray; he's entitled and too loud and the way he treats the girls they hang out with makes Peeta uncomfortable. Peeta can't explain why exactly Cray sits with the group of them at lunch, actually. He just always has.

"Is that the new girl?" Cray had said, second day of school, midway through lunch. "Wouldn't kick that out of bed."

Peeta ignored him.

"Gross," Delly had said in response.

"That ass just makes me want to—" Thankfully, Delly elbowed Cray hard in the stomach before he could finish.

Still—that, shamefully, was what had made Peeta look. His eyes scanned the lunch crowd, looking for someone unfamiliar, and found her: thin, muscled legs under cut-off jean shorts, faded black t-shirt, messy black hair and long slim neck.

The new girl turned their direction and—Peeta couldn't have explained it if anyone had asked. She just—ensnared him. Feeling shot through him, left his fingertips tingling. He couldn't stop looking at her. He felt heat rise into his cheek and, quickly, turned his head away.

But it isn't just that.

What calls to Peeta about Katniss, he had realized after awhile, is how she doesn't seem to care. It isn't that she doesn't seem to care about _anything_. He sees how she is with Gale Hawthorne, the way they joke around, how pleased she looks when he slings an arm around her and ruffles her hair. He sees, too, how she stands up for the younger students, and redirects people like Cray's attention.

No, it's that she doesn't seem to care about high school. This place, these people—it isn't her whole world.

Now, Peeta, he cares. Just not the same way his friends do. They care because high school is the most important thing in their lives; he cares because high school isn't. He cares because high school is a haven, a place where he has control.

Katniss clearly has something bigger outside of school, too. But it is also clear that Katniss has something _good_—something that allows her to rise above the same petty schoolyard game he clings to.

Good but—he realizes, sitting there in the hard, cold seats of their school auditorium, watching Haymitch interrogate Katniss and listening, rapt, to her answers—not easy. He wishes she felt about him the way he feels about her. He wishes he were her friend, like Gale is her friend, so he could put his arms around her and tell her it's okay. He dreams about it, sometimes—holding her, taking care of her. Not because she needs it, but because she doesn't.

Except maybe, he's starting to realize, she _does_ need someone to take care of her—just sometimes, just a little. Because it doesn't sound like she has anyone else to, not really. And that he understands all too well.


	3. Chapters 12-13: Missing Scene

**Notes**: Missing scene between Katniss and Peeta. Goes between "The Pan-American High School Scholarship Pageant Competition" chapters 12 and 13.

* * *

"I heard Peeta sat with you and Madge at lunch today," Gale says as he sits down at his and my table during shop.

"Is it expensive to pay your invisible army of spies?" I grouse, shoving his materials for the day in front of him with more force than necessary.

"Hey, whoa, sorry, Catnip." Gale puts his hands up in front of him, half in self-protection and half in an expression of harmlessness.

"No, sorry," I say. "Lunch was . . . weird. I'm still . . ." I shrug, not finding the words.

"Because of Peeta?" Gale asks. I shrug again, to avoid mentioning Madge—Gale gets weird about her, sometimes—and Gale asks, "Why was he there, anyway?"

That's something I want to talk about even less.

"He was worried," I say reluctantly.

"About you?" Gale asks.

"Yesterday at practice . . . look, can we not talk about this?"

"Sure," Gale says.

Probably he means it. But he keeps glancing over at me during class, and by the time the bell rings, I'm ready to talk. Which I'm pretty sure Gale expected.

"Haymitch made us practice getting interviewed yesterday after school," I tell him as we pull away from the school.

"Yeah?" he asks.

"He asked about my parents."

"I get it," he says, and I know he does. But I feel like I need to say it out loud anyway.

"It made me think of New York," I say quietly. Gale grabs my hand and squeezes it across the front seat.

Gale is the only person I've ever told about my family—about my mother, about where we were before we came here.

I hadn't meant to. There'd been a substitute one Wednesday last semester in shop class, so Gale and I had skipped, and hung out in the woods past the football field all period instead. He'd been talking about his family, about his brothers, and his mom, and it had just—come out.

Gale's dad passed away, too. He knows what it's like to have to be responsible for your family instead of them being responsible for you. But even he doesn't understand, not really. Because he's always had his mom. He's always had someone that he could depend on.

"Did you give you a hard time about it?" There's steel in his voice. It's nice. To know he'd stick up for me. Even if I don't need it.

"No. He was . . . sweet."

Gale relaxes, and nudges me with a slight smile. "Sounds horrible."

I fight my own smile, relaxing back into the seat and reaching to turn on the radio. "It totally was."


	4. Chapter 15: Peeta

**Notes**: Some background on Peeta's, uh, _visual aid_. Goes with "The Pan-American High School Scholarship Pageant Competition" chapter 15.

* * *

What Peeta didn't tell Katniss was that he was jerking off to a picture, and that it was a picture of her.

Because then _that_ would have become his most embarrassing memory.

He hadn't gone in search of a photo of her or anything. He'd just been walking to class one day in late October when the guy in front of him had dropped a binder. The contents—papers, negatives in plastic sleeves, photos—flew everywhere, the guy cursed, and Peeta automatically stopped to help. When the bell rang and the hall emptied out, they were both still there, him collecting a few last escaped photos as the guy stuffed the rest back into binder pockets.

One of the last photos he'd picked up was—her. Katniss.

He doesn't remember making a conscious choice to take the picture. When he handed the last photos back, he just—didn't give that one back, too.

"Thanks, man," the guy had said. "I appreciate it. I'm Gale."

"Peeta," he'd said in return. "Nice to meet you."

When he got home that night, he'd pulled the picture out from the inside of his chemistry test book, where he'd stashed it for safe-keeping, and drank it in. It was bent a little around the edges from the way he'd shoved it so hastily into his pocket in the hallway, but the rest was undamaged.

It was a close-up of Katniss' face, a grassy field stretched out behind her. Her eyes were narrowed, but playfully, looking at the camera with one hand shading them from the sun and keeping the hair off her forehead. Her skin glowed, the gray of her eyes vibrant and warm. The photo cut off the very top of her head and ended just below the fragile jut of her collarbones, which were crossed by thick black tank top straps.

He'd tried to draw her a half-dozen times, and while the sketches of her as he remembers her at lunch, or in class, turn out okay, he's never felt like they were really _her_. And every time he's tried to draw her—tried to imagine her—relaxed or happy, it's always felt wrong. Now, seeing this picture, he understands why. The picture was like a secret window into a place he didn't—shouldn't—get to see. It was . . . private.

A couple of days later, at school, Gale had tracked him down.

"Give me the picture," he said.

He was a good four or five inches taller than Peeta, and he was using every bit of it, glower on his face.

"What are you talking about?" Peeta asked, heart hammering.

"I'm missing one of the pictures I dropped. Of Katniss. I've seen you looking at her. And I want picture back."

"Maybe it slid under a locker," Peeta suggested.

Gale glowered harder, then just turned around and left, muttering, "Pervert," as he went.

"You're welcome," Peeta called to his back, like an idiot.

Part of him feels bad for lying, not to mention stealing, and like the pervert Gale called him for lying about stealing a picture of a girl, especially since it was a picture of the girl he liked. But seeing that picture was the first time he could really image what it might be like to kiss her. So he didn't feel nearly as bad as he knew he should.

Gale got to see her like that all the time. All Peeta had was that picture.


End file.
